Yes, that’s fine.
What I am objecting to is not giving primary school children enough freedom from an adult impulse to introduce labels and fix them in a category as early as possible.
“Pride” itself is an adult idea that is becoming more extreme. Some lesbians, and gay men are distancing themselves from it. Starting children with “Baby Pride” to get them ready for adult versions of “Pride” is something they don’t need as a priority as part of school.
It is now an adult political agenda. The original need has been satisfied. It has gone beyond its original intentions and can now promote harmful ideas in teenagers’ and young people’s minds about their bodies and about no boundaries. Is it now supposed to be spread to primary school children?
I suspect this head has not caught up with the Cass review, and reforms to school teaching of PSHE.
This below was written by Dennis Kavanagh, who is head of The Gay Men’s Network, in Spiked magazine.
This year’s Pride Month has rarely seemed so pointless. After all, only the truly shameless in the LGBT activist set could feel any pride in 2024 – a year in which the rainbow-flag fliers’ betrayal of gay youngsters in the name of gender ideology was laid bare.
The publication of the Cass Review in April exposed the scandal of the NHS’s treatment of ‘gender confused’ kids. It showed how the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) subjected troubled, often gay youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments. Yet when these same-sex-attracted young people needed a gay movement, it failed them. Stonewall, its principal representative, actively cheered on those encouraging gay youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body. Former Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt even warned parents that half their gender-distressed children would commit suicide without puberty blockers. At the same time, leading sections of the gay movement turned on anyone questioning the trans agenda.
You won’t see any reflection on this betrayal of gays and lesbians during Pride Month. There will be no recognition that by embracing gender ideology, the gay-rights movement of today has undermined the gay rights of tomorrow. Instead, an unholy alliance of corporates, trade unions and parading gendercrats will spend weeks celebrating their supposed virtue, while remaining oblivious to the absurdity and growing unpopularity of the movement they represent.
Don’t let the ubiquitous Pride flag fool you over the coming weeks into thinking this is a successful movement. How strong can a ‘gay rights’ movement be if it has allowed its next generation to be chemically castrated? How strong can a movement be that has allowed lesbians like Kathleen Stock or Julie Bindel to be deplatformed, harassed and sacked for standing up to gender ideology?
The new ‘Progress Pride’ flag tells the story of the movement’s corruption. A new trans chevron makes an ugly incursion from the left, with an ‘intersex-inclusive’ purple circle placed on top of it (despite some intersex activists asking not to be included). This is more of a logo now and less of a flag. It symbolises the hostile takeover of the gay-rights movement by gender-identity ideology.
Pride was once our answer to shame. The riposte to being kicked out of your home for coming out. The retort to everyday incidents of homophobia, which are now thankfully a thing of the past in the UK and the West.
Today’s Pride is different. It is not a response to a sense of shame. It is a false pride born of shamelessness. A pride fuelled by the self-righteous embrace of the cause of trans rights. Think of Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley calling lesbians ‘sexual racists’ in 2021 for not wanting to have sex with biological males. Think of those happily suppressing moderate gay voices for warning that ‘conversion-therapy bans’ simply criminalise ordinary therapy for gender-confused youth. Or how Stonewall did everything in its power to hound gender-critical barrister Allison Bailey out of a job.
Today’s Pride is different. It is not a response to a sense of shame. It is a false pride born of shamelessness. A pride fuelled by the self-righteous embrace of the cause of trans rights. Think of Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley calling lesbians ‘sexual racists’ in 2021 for not wanting to have sex with biological males. Think of those happily suppressing moderate gay voices for warning that ‘conversion-therapy bans’ simply criminalise ordinary therapy for gender-confused youth. Or how Stonewall did everything in its power to hound gender-critical barrister Allison Bailey out of a job.
Pride, the holy month of the rainbow, is now a thoroughly rudderless affair. Its foolish embrace of the specious cause of trans rights has cost it dear. This increasingly silly party now takes place against the backdrop of a generation-defining medical scandal that Pride and its backers endorsed. Even Stonewall seems cowed. It certainly seems less keen to pronounce that transing a two-year-old is a good idea than it was just a few years ago.
Pride should parade its way into irrelevance. The gay-rights activism of the future will need to look very different.
Dennis Kavanagh is a director of Gay Men’s Network.